


A smile can break the world

by solisnotdead



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Anyways, Canon Rewrite, M/M, Not My Fault, Paris Uprising 1832, They die, enjoltaire - Freeform, i guess i wanted to write pain, i literally just rewrote the scene, i used some sentences, idk man, let's blame victore huge hoe, straight from the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 21:14:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14293587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solisnotdead/pseuds/solisnotdead
Summary: Enjolras and Grantaire die together, but this time, it's longer.





	A smile can break the world

He saw death before he opened his eyes. There was something particular and almost intoxicating about the silence that followed loss on its path. It felt cold, heavy, as if a winter sky had fallen apart and the wind had taken everything away. Smiles, laughter, voices that used to sing about tomorrow. But tomorrow would never come and stories could only ever be told about yesterday. Yesterday morning ands birds singing. Yesterday evening and alcohol heating throats.

 

It was this silence that had woken him up. Not the fight for life, but its disappearance.

 

All this he knew, his eyes still closed. He wanted to run away. One more time. To escape reality and what he had done. Hadn’t done. Maybe it would all go away. He only needed to drink. Bottles filled with the beverage of a man who wasn’t alive enough to taste the tears on his lips and the blood on his hands.

 

The poison of the drunk soul still blurred his mind. His thoughts were unclear, made dizzy by wine and this strange smell of death. Though, at the core itself of this waltz of chaos remained a belief so unwavering it was enough to keep the others away. This conviction of his almost felt too loud for the bleeding quiet in which he was drowning: Enjolras would, _could_ , not die at the hands of subjection.

 

The thought of his only light opened his eyes, for a blind man such as Grantaire could only see what darkness was too weak to bear, to hide, to hold tight in its cruel hands. As he looked around him, the drunkard saw the blurry lines of a world he thought he recognised draw themselves on the white canvas of ruination.

 

Chairs were either missing or empty, meant to protect his friends on the barricade or to welcome them afterwards. _His friends_. The sour taste of death took his breath away and left him hollow, only filled by a strange mix of horror and realisation. He tried to get up, but a deafening truth held him down. He couldn’t move, nor was he able to breathe. He wished he could scream but burns inflicted by wine still lacerated his throat. There was a grief, not quite there yet, floating in the air around him, staining it, that could not be spoken.

 

He needed not go outside to verify what everything inside of him was crying.

 

Sorrow had not yet borrowed the last piece of him that he heard a voice, which he, for a single second of faith, thought was God’s. A God who would never, even by His uniqueness, reach his Apollo’s heavens for there was a stairway the could only be climbed by love for the people, one that the good and mighty Lord above had never shown, if He even existed. It took a moment he feared had lasted too long to realise only Enjolras could have talked through the veil of death, reached him and brought him close to believing.

 

Drunk thoughts vanished as life just had and Grantaire found himself climbing the very steps on a stairway that was never meant to be his path. Some were missing but he did not care for the way to hell was paved with good intentions and the one to paradise was made of beliefs he had fought never to have.

 

As he reached the top of the stairs, he heard Enjolras’ clear voice rise and say, “Shoot me.”

 

His tone sounded firm and accepting of his fate. These were the words of a man who held his said defeat like a flag, with pride. A flag which he was brandishing high, as if he were reaching for the sky and freedom and victory. He was welcoming death with all his faith, ready to die at the hands of the people he fought against, for the same people he fought for.

 

When Grantaire eventually saw him, standing in a corner, chest greeting bullets and eyes daring them to try to kill his ideas. Time had slowed down, almost so that the drunkard could watch Apollo’s light die out. The god of light, admired in his last moments by his unique shadow, a man who did not believe.

 

His reverie was interrupted by a guard’s laughter. “It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower.” Little did he know red rain poured on the cobblestones would only make the flowers grow. They would live a hundred years, rising through what was past, reaching for a fallen god’s light. A few drops of blood, delivered by a chained society, could not hurt any flower.

 

Guards surrounded the last blossom that would ted to let a tree grow, right here, a symbol of life among the dead. And Grantaire, a plant that had rather grow in the dark to avoid getting burnt, was the only witness left to the slaughter of a utopian world.

 

“Take aim!”

 

The blinded mind didn’t think twice before he shouted, “Vive la République! I belong to it.”

 

For the first time today, or maybe for the first time ever, Enjolras saw him. His eyes instantly softened as they found a familiar face amidst endarkened figures. The battle faded around him and all he had focused on Grantaire, the candle of hope he had been trying to light up for years, one that was so sure the world had to be cold in order to stay whole. Apollo and Carnus, which had been blurred into Apollo and Icarus to the drunkard, were to watch the sunset and salute the beginning of a night.

 

Grantaire was standing next to Enjolras, his eyes made dark by life, or was it by death? No one could know, and no one ever would. There were things history would never tell. Two hundred years later, no one would be able to sing what those boys had sung the night before, to describe what it had felt like to look into a man’s eyes and see nothing but fatality.

 

Enjolras was still staring at Grantaire, wondering if the latter was aware that he had stolen from a revolutionary. He had taken away the anger and the determination from his last moments to turn them into a softness so raw and fragile, the final blast meant to take away each petals of a shot flower became a simple breeze, itself too afraid to break such a beauty.

 

“Finish both of us at one blow,” said he.

 

Then, he eventually turned to Enjolras. A small smile caressed his lips, and that was how the fearless leader knew he was about to die. Angels only could kiss a mouth with the tips of their fingers and make it look so heavenly, one would raise hell just to see it.

 

“Do you permit it?” The words were murmured, the sparkle of a voice become a star to follow in this sea of blood. Waves clashed against the boat of the damned as a tempest was ripping the skies. But in this tumult loud enough to startle the gods, Grantaire’s question felt like the ray of sunlight that would light up the whole universe.

 

Enjolras grabbed his hand with a smile. A smile the drunkard had never seen directed to him. All his life, he had only been pretending to be indifferent to his Apollo’s aura. Yet, the man he loved, only on his own, the man he believed in, like dozens of others did, was now looking at him the way he saw tomorrow: bright and full of hope. In this short moment between life and death, reeling sober towards his future, Grantaire was someone.

 

The smile was not yet finished when the report sounded. It was still stared at by a drunkard and offered by a man who would be forgotten by all. They were holding each other’s hand, leading one another to salvation, for their love which had never been spoken, nor acknowledged, and would never be, was nevertheless everlasting.

 

Pinned by eight bullets to a wall, Enjolras died with a revolution. Heaven only could give the man and his friends the freedom they sought. He stood on earth, a miserable man amongst others, a heart that had stopped beating to let the drums of tomorrow rhythm the steps of liberty.

 

Lying at his feet, his hand reaching out and holding the sun’s, Grantaire kneeled before his light. His eyes, blinded for once by a star instead of darkness, still reflected the hint of a smile.

 

Apollo and Icarus had fallen from their thrones, rushing towards heavens and planting seeds for a garden that had yet to grow. For a flower sometimes had to perish so that a forest could rear.

**Author's Note:**

> First : I don't speak English, like, I swear to god, I'm so shit. So if it doesn't make sense, then just know that I'm French and I'm basically making it more real, because french people don't speak english.
> 
> Also, thank you for reading? I'm honestly touched. Honestly, I wonder why anyone would think "oh my god, 1K words of them dying! My favourite bedtime story!", but if that's your thing then good, I'm not judging. And thank you!
> 
> I literally used sentences from the book because it felt more painful to me, but now I feel bad for stealing a man's words. So, uh here are the sentences that weren't mine at all:  
> " “It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower.” "  
> " “Vive la République! I belong to it.” "  
> " “Finish both of us at one blow,” said he. "  
> " “Do you permit it?” " (I couldn't not put this one, sorry)
> 
> btw if you wanna comment, feel free to!


End file.
